About Coffee and Coffee Mugs - Part 1

Part of my coffee mug collection

Last weekend my daughter and her husband decided to reorganize their kitchen cupboards to make room for new kitchen items. So my daughter decided to part with some of her coffee mug collection. Now I'm rather partial to both coffee and coffee mugs, so I sat down on the floor and went through the plastic bin holding all those coffee mugs looking for a new home. I picked out 13 mugs to take home with me. Five black and silver Planet Hollywood mugs, one each from Key West, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Atlanta and Ft. Lauderdale. We were vacationing together when she bought the ones from the first three locations, so those mugs have special memories attached. The other two were from cities I've been to, but I wasn't with her when she bought them.

Anyway, just holding one of those mugs brings back magical stories of other times and other places. So I had to rescue those mugs from going to the Goodwill or some such place. I selected a Royal Caribbean mug with dolphins on it, from one of their Caribbean Cruises. I've never gone on a big-ship cruise, but I've always thought it sounds romantic and exotic, so I had to take that mug too. Plus, I love dolphins. One mug is decorated with elephants, there's even a tiny one inside the rim, and is from Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay. I have fun memories of Busch Gardens, so I needed that coffee mug too. And I happen to love elephants.

One mug is festooned with voodoo dolls and says "Voodoo New Orleans." Well, voodoo happens. It's called "life" and it happens all around us and not always the way we want things to go. New Orleans is one of my favorite places, so this mug brings back memories of the French Quarter and Mardi Gras, where my husband and I fell in love many many years ago during Mardi Gras.

Another mug,  from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, says "I Need My Space." That is a definite truth. My daughter and I each bought one of those mugs on one of our many vacations. I still have my own mug from that trip, so I'll just add hers to my collection. Another mug is festooned with brightly colored Las Vegas casinos trimmed in gold from the time my daughter and her husband, then newlyweds, visited us in Las Vegas. Funny thing, we lived in Vegas for years, but I never bought a coffee mug from there. Go figure.

Other mugs are from places I've never been, but the mugs are too cool not to add to my collection. A deep-navy-blue mug with a fish logo from "Mr. Carlos' n Charlie's" in Cozumel. I've never been to Cozumel, but it's on my "I want to go there" list. A black mug with yellow cat's eyes from the time my daughter and her husband saw the Broadway production of "Cats" in NYC.  I've been to NYC, but I've yet to see "Cats."

The 13th mug has a picture of a wild eyed cat and says "So much stress, so little time."  That used to be my daughter's every-day-mug. Maybe by giving away the mug she's giving away some of the stress?  Not likely though, because she works full-time as a CPA and has my three little grandchildren to raise and her marriage to maintain. So stress will always be a part of her life. Welcome to the world of being a daughter and a wife and a mother and, hopefully someday, a grandmother. Yep, stress is a way of life. It slows us down sometimes, but usually motivates us to do other things to alleviate that stress. Anyway, that's another "story" altogether.

So I came home that day with 13 new coffee mugs and my husband groaned. Yeah, he always groans, because he doesn't understand lots of the things I do. His response, "You already have more mugs than you can use." He's wrong about that. When you collect things, there's never enough. He has things he collects too, but not coffee mugs. I quickly rearranged my cupboards to find room for the new additions.

I have a favorite coffee mug that I use most mornings. It's from "The Zoo" just down the road from us in Gulf Breeze. It's a tiny zoo which is always financially struggling to survive. I have mixed feelings about zoos. The animals are confined and would most likely be happier in the wild. On the other hand, most of those animals would probably have been killed and skinned or eaten in the wild long before this, so for many zoo animals it's a choice between life and death.

Sorry, but I'm getting a little heavy here, so bear with me for a second. This zoo is important for a small community like ours. If it wasn't here, many of our kids might grow up never knowing what a real lion or giraffe or hippo looks like. They would only be pictures in books or a film clip on "Animal Planet." Because of the zoo, one of my grandson's earliest words was "giraffe" and he would tell everyone that a giraffe has a "loooooong neck." He also tells how a giraffe has a long sticky tongue when it eats out of your hand. So as I hold that coffee mug each morning I think of my grandson and our latest trip to the zoo.

I'm digressing here, so guess I'd better get back to the subject in hand, coffee and coffee mugs. I thought this would be a simple little post, but I realize now that this, like the giraffe's neck, is a loooooong one. (Read more in Part 2.)

More Memories



My parents' wedding

 After looking at all those old photos in my cedar chest, I just had to scan some of them for safekeeping. Actually, I put my husband to work doing the scanning while I kept sorting through all those old memorabilia.

I love that group photo from my parent's wedding, Mom looking so terribly young, Pop (my maternal grandfather) standing next to her, then Dad looking much too young to get married, then Grandma (his mother) standing next to him. Grandpa Will (his father) had passed away a few years before. That's my Nana (my maternal grandma) in the wheelchair. She was paralyzed at 16 from polio, so I only knew her as "my Nana in a wheelchair." I thought she was cool. I could sit on her lap and she could wheel me all over the place. She even let me play in her wheelchair when she was taking a nap.

I look a lot like my Nana and my Auntie B. I got my strawberry blond hair from them and from my Dad. My blue-green eyes I got from my Dad. Oh yeah, I guess I got my temper from my Dad too. Anyway, so many memories, all packed up in that cedar chest just waiting for me to take them back out again.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Grandma & Grandpa Will's Wedding

I spent all day going through my old cedar chest, looking at photos, old letters, an assortment of keepsakes. I made one pile of "Why did I keep that?" - ancient newspaper articles that mean nothing to me now, photos of people or places I don't even remember, some photos so discolored and faded they're not worth keeping. I found two tickets for a free dinner at Circus Circus Casino in Reno, only the tickets are 28 years old. That goes back to the few months that I lived in Reno and worked at Circus Circus. I even found my name badge and my Employee Manual (not much more than a pamphlet).

So some of those things went from the "Why did I keep that?" pile to the "I guess I'd better keep this a little longer" pile. That included handmade and store-bought birthday and Mother's Day cards from my daughter, birthday and Christmas cards from my Mom, postcards received from far-off places, and even some postcards that I sent to family members many many years ago.

 In the end, I only threw away a few odds and ends. Mostly I just organized things and put them back in the cedar chest. The chest itself is over a hundred years old, one of the few things I received years ago from my paternal grandmother. In the chest I found her wedding picture to Grandpa Will, who was many years older than my grandmother. They had three sons, of which my father was the youngest. I even found a photo of my Dad when he was just a little tyke with his two older brothers, his dad and his uncle. They were all eating watermelon.  I realized those "ears that stick out" were passed on down to my grandson. So now I can tell him where he got his ears (actually, the ears came from both of my grandfathers).

My Dad (the little guy) with his Brothers, Uncle & Father

I found my old baby album with a picture of me at 2 weeks old with my Mom. I was a skinny little preemie born a month early. Another photo of me at 3 months old shows I quickly started gaining that baby chubbiness. I found some black and white photos of my parent's wedding. They were so cute and so young, only 18. My head is spinning with all those old stories and old memories. Some things brought tears to my eyes, others made me smile. I don't know if it was good or not to take this trip down memory lane.

Afternoons with the Grands

Most weekend afternoons I spend with my three grandkids. No one was sick this time, which is rare lately, so lots of energy all around. My grandson is four years old, has "spiky" blond hair (he used to be a strawberry blond, but now he's a beach blond), young "Brad Pitt" good looks and is already a computer and gamer "techie." On his 4th birthday he got his very own ipad and he can whiz through all his games (many are learning games) at record speed. He knows all the "techie" jargon and I listen to him in awe, because I don't know all that much about computers and gaming.

Whenever I visit, my grandson shows me his latest game (I think for ipad most games are only a couple dollars, so he has bunches of them). He often asks, "Nana, did you have this game when you were a kid?" "Nope," I always tell him. So he turns to his Mom (my daughter and only child) and asks her the same question. "No, sweetie," she says. "We didn't have those kind of games when I was a kid." My daughter was born in '77, so she remembers how primitive computers and computer games were during her childhood. Anyway, my grandson always looks at us with puzzlement, he can't imagine a world without ipads, cell phones, digital cameras, DVDs, CDs and Wii. So I sit there and watch his latest games, usually something about cooking, because he wants to be a Chef when he grows up. His Daddy and Grandpa are the cooks in their respective households, so he thinks Moms and Nanas don't know how to cook.

Today's game had something to do with making breakfast. Pancakes and toast and waffles and fruit and juice and everything you can imagine. Then he added, "But Nana, this is the best part, it's gross." Yep, the "gross part" is that he can add bugs, frogs, worms, spiders, just about any kind of creepy crawly to the digital breakfast. "And then Nana," he says, "you have to eat it." He proceeded to tell me that when he "cooked" breakfast for his Daddy this morning he put a frog on the pancakes and his Daddy ate it. Yep, there's a button you touch that says "Eat" and then you tap the screen with your finger and the food disappears while you listen to gobbling sounds. Ahhhhh!!!! So these are the kinds of games a four year old boy likes?

Within minutes the girls are up from their nap. They're 18 month old identical twins, strawberry blonds with big blue eyes and award winning smiles. Their eyes lite up when they see the ipad and their little fingers join in the game and start tapping the screen. My guess is these two will be little "techies" too. Daddy is a CIS Engineer, so I guess the kids come by it naturally. As the digital food gets gobbled up the twins shriek in delight and my grandson laughs at the girls' antics.

For now, the girls call their brother "Lolo" or "Bubba." They absolutely will not say his real name although it's a pretty easy one. So he tells the girls, "Follow Bubba" and they take off after him into the playroom. Yep, these kids have an actual playroom with every toy imaginable, including a wii and a wooden train table set. The girls, I'll just call them Baby1 and Baby2, because we all call both of them "Baby." They know their own names, but the girls call each other "Baby" too so we all just follow suit. First off, the Kids Bop music CDs come on. Bubba loves to dance. He says, "Nana, I have to dance, I have dancing feet." So I pretty much have him pegged to grow up and be a "Dancing Chef" who has all his gourmet recipes available on the ipad-of-the-future. The girls have dancing feet too.

Hmm! Now what are the girls going to be? They jabber away non-stop in a mixture of "twin talk" and real words, the important words like, "read book" (I read them lots and lots of books),  "draw car" (they love to have me draw pictures for them on their drawing pads), "wait for me" (one is always rushing ahead of the other to get somewhere fast), "outside" (outside is always better than inside), "dinosaur" (Bubba has dinosaurs and some of their favorite books are about dinosaurs) and "bye-bye." They each hoist a Disney purse over their shoulders, grab up whatever baby doll or stuffed animal is nearby, pick up a drawing pad with the other hand and say "Bye-bye" as they're heading for the front door. The girls have a darling southern accent and award-winning smiles, so I'm thinking their career of choice will be "Southern Belles."  Their "Mom-Mom" (not "Mommy") was a quiet, serious child and is now a CPA, so no, the twins don't take after her. They got their strawberry blond hair from me, their dimples from their other grandmother, but their "wild-child" shrieks of laughter and winning smiles are all their own.

On my visits I pretty much just sit on the playroom floor and let the action go on around me. I had back surgery a few years ago and have osteoarthritis and a degenerative back disease, so it's best that I don't pick up those heavy babies all that often. But what can I do when they raise their arms and say "Nanaaaaa..." Which of course is a plea for me to pick up a baby (I think about 24 lbs each right now). The girls are little whirlwinds. They move so fast and can leave a wake of destruction (a genuine mess) in their path. Until recently, Bubba referred to the girls as "Destructo Babies." But the girls are learning to be more careful with Bubba's books and puzzles and other things now, so they're no longer "Destructo Babies." Bubba tells each of them in turn, "You are an adorable baby" and, of course, each baby just beams.

Well, now I'm reclining on the couch with my feet propped on a pillow and the laptop in my lap. I took a pain pill (Vicodin, like "House" takes on TV) a couple hours ago, so I'm doing okay. All day Monday I'll need more pain pills and possibly into Tuesday. So I'll have to take it easy for two days and rest my back. By the weekend I'll be ready for more "Afternoons with the Grands."

A Rainy Day in Paradise

Aug. 20 - Rain on my Patio

Today is a rainy day in paradise. Florida might not be a paradise for everyone, but it works just fine for me. We seem to have scooted past the scorching hot "dog days of summer" and are now into the intermittent rain squalls. I like this kind of weather. The rain comes down in spurts and keeps the air clean and fragrant with the smell of whatever flowers are blooming at the moment. Today there's a whiff of Gardenias in the air.

I never realized how much I loved rain until we moved away from Florida to live in Las Vegas for several years. There you learn to pray for rain. Then you want to dance and sing in that rain when it does finally arrive. In Vegas it's like no rain forever and then one day it's flash floods. There's no inbetween in the desert. It's a harsh climate of hot, dry, 117 degree weather through the summer months, blustery Santa Ana winds in the fall, maybe a few snowflakes in the winter, followed by some scattered spring rains. Then for a few weeks the desert comes alive with wild flowers.

When we moved to the Texas Hill Country we had even less rain, if that can be imagined. We lived on the top of a hill with a panoramic view of rolling hills dotted with scrub oaks and red cedars and lots of rocks. The rocky soil there is called "hardscrabble" and it's pretty difficult to grow much of anything in it. I had to satisfy myself with pots filled with brightly colored flowers. We had a big covered back veranda so I had potted flowers everywhere.

The only problem with flowers in the Texas Hill Country is that the deer liked to eat them. And since we had a regular crowd of white-tailed deer visiting us on a daily basis, many of my flowers became lunch. I remember one day when a young buck, I named him Seymour after the "Little Shop of Horrors," decided he wanted some of my flowers. I was at the sink washing dishes and through the window saw Seymour standing among some pots of flowers near the front porch. Rushing out, I caught him red-handed with a whole marigold plant in his mouth, the golden marigolds hanging out of one side of his mouth and the roots hanging out the other. I scolded him and he promptly dropped the marigolds and backed away with a very guilty look on his face. Funny thing, I never caught him eating any of my flowers again. That doesn't mean he didn't actually eat some flowers now and then, only that he made sure I wasn't watching.

Anyway, in the 18 months we lived in Texas there was probably only 4 or 5 days of rain all told. A couple of those days the rain was so pitiful it was almost more like spit coming down from the sky. The other days the rain was so torrential it caused flash floods in the valleys. Those of us living on the hilltops just enjoyed the rain.

Now that we live back in Florida I cherish every minute of the rain. Some days, like today, it's a series of 10 or 15 minute rain squalls interspersed with sunshine. Sometimes it's days and nights of rain with no end in sight. Other times it could be weeks or even months before the next good rain storm. So for today all the flowers and trees and other plants are happy. Today I'm happy too.